Sonnet 62

Like a great painting etched with crazing time,
So has your visage grown more rich with praise.
Time’s lust to ravage leaves you more sublime,
For time so shackled can all eyes amaze.
Yet how can bairns, with time, seem but more strong
When all else tested crumbles to decay?
Even Helen, in patinated bronze
Leaves but a battered memory of her day.
No beauty can hold out against such siege
Even stamped on canvas, bronze or marbled stone.
No icon, born of man, can yet allege
A legacy that ages can’t o’er throw.
Still, beauty’s grace embossed in minds of men,
Endures in echoes wrought by hand and pen.